L'énantiosémie comme (én)action sémantique

International audienceEnantiosemy is usually described as the phenomenon whereby through which a semiotic form allows semantically opposed interpretations (see Böhmerová 1997, Larue-Tondeur 2009, Legallois 2013): e.g. hôte in French ("the one who receives" or, conversely," the one who is invited "). We define it in an enactive perspective (cf. Cowley 2007, 2009, Kravchenko 2012 about forms enaction) as a corporeal and semantic behavior allowing differences of points of view and oppositions involved in the dynamic construction of a form. We work on an application at the sub-morphological level, that is to say on consonantal or vocalic matrices situated upstream the morpheme (see Bohas-Dat 2007, Grégoire 2012a, 2012c, Bohas-Kachmar 2017). For example, the Spanish word flamenco ("Flemish (substantive) / Flemish (adjective)", "pink flaming") may also refer to someone who is "thin, lean" or "well-fleshed" DRAE, sv). And these two "contrary" meanings are consistent with the concept of "reduction" linked to the sub-morpheme {nasal x velar} realized here [ηk] (Grégoire 2012a, forthcoming 1). The pronunciation of this submorpheme implies a tightening / loosening of the pharyngeal walls on the bodily plane. Thus, this case of enantiosemy is explained by the fact that a corporeal movement always suggests the converse movement, which makes it possible to envisage that every sensorimotor act is characterized in particular by its necessary duplicity. For example, an opening movement can only be designed as preceded by a closing movement, and vice versa. Furthermore, sensorimotor experiments may differ from one individual to another depending on the dialogic recorded interactions (here the leanness of the pink flamingo or the perception of the Flemings as massive individuals). It is the enaction of the rest of semiology, the context and co-text, which both contribute to specifying the semantic orientation at the dialogal level retroactively (see Poirier, forthcoming; Grégoire, forthcoming 1 and 2). The enantiosemy thus seems particularly interesting to demonstrate the non-representational character of meaning by the corporeal commitment and the intersubjective relation (dialogical and dialogal). In this paper we propose to apply this question to different submorphemes of several languages: in English, we will study the different constructions of the phoneme /i/ in big and in little where different aspects of its articulatory process are used depending on the morphological and co(n)textual environment (see Toussaint 1983, 2003). In Spanish, we will deal with the case of the {nasal x velar} group linked to the concept of "reduction": e.g. Spanish pingue ("boat whose holds are widening to bring in more material") or pinga ("pinch") involving both an opening and a closure. We will also mention the cases of reduplications often linked to the lack of "skill" (e.g. bobo, lelo, tonto, gago, zazo, tartamudo), which are opposed to other duplicated forms, referring instead to an “astute attitude” (cf. cuco, cuca "astute, dandy"). Finally, we discuss what we call enantiomorphy (see Grégoire 2012a, 2012c, Macchi 2017), where the enantiosemy is iconic of a formal inversion in the process of word constructing